If you could photograph any celebrity, who would you pick? Not a paparazzi grab, but a for-real photo shoot of your own design. Pick 5 living celebrities (as they actually are now, not 20 years ago).

So, after a bit of thought, here are my picks:

Men: Morgan Freeman, James Franko, Forest Whitaker, Johnny Depp, and Leonard Nimoy.

Women: Isabella Rossellini, Julianne Moore, Grace Jones, Angelina Jolie, and Whoopi Goldberg.

Expanding the list to include deceased celebrities:

Men: Bruce Lee, Paul Newman, Yul Brynner, James Dean, Lee Marvin

Women: Katherine Hepburn, Lucy (Lucille Ball), Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Mae West.

I chose some for their appearance alone, and others because they interest me for other reasons, most for a combination of both. Leonard Nimoy, for example, now has a wonderfully craggy face and would be an interesting photographic subject even if he weren’t famous. But he also seems like an interesting fellow, and he is an accomplished photographer himself. I imagine he’d be bored if I did a straight up portrait, but would be pleased if I got all creative and did something interesting.

A: This surprises many people, but usually I don’t know.

I get asked this a lot. I work with mostly male models for my art photography. Lots of people (incorrectly) assume male models are predominantly gay. Most people know I’m gay. So I suppose it isn’t an unreasonable question.

But I really don’t know. I never ask. I don’t assume. It doesn’t matter to me, as long as they are willing to work with me to create my art. It really isn’t relevant to my photo shoots.

Sometimes while we’re working during a long shoot, a model might mention his girlfriend or boyfriend as part of a conversation. So I can infer the orientation of perhaps half the models I’ve worked with. Or at least the gender of who they happened to be dating at the time. The other half I haven’t a clue. Of the models where I know (or can infer) their orientation, most of them are straight. This surprises some friends who’ve asked, but it really shouldn’t. Most of the population is straight, and that holds true for models too. But I’ll concede that about a third of the male models I know of are gay. So while still a minority, that is a significantly higher percentage than in the general population.

     I was in Hawaii last week for my brother’s wedding. My partner and I stayed in a rented condo with my parents. We’ve traveled to Hawaii together before, and one of our routines is to walk on the beach every morning. One morning, my partner spotted a large sea turtle in the water. It was less than ten feet from shore in very shallow protected water. We probably could have waded right up and patted it on the head.

     My camera bag, filled with equipment with which I could have undoubtedly gotten a perfect photo, was back at the condo.  My partner’s iPhone was in his pocket.  He got a photo of the sea turtle. I did not.

     That is when an iPhone you happen to have with you is better than all the best pro equipment that is five blocks away.

     The most interesting thing I saw was an exhibition at the Garde Rail Gallery by an artist named John Taylor. He apparently builds these ships (mostly ships) from scratch using found materials. They are immensely detailed. And unlike a pristine model, these mostly look like what you’d see in a shipwreck, or a ship long neglected and past its hay day, which gives them real character and elicit an emotional response. Plus it appealed to the kid in me that used to build lots of models when I was a boy.

     I won a “Concept Shot of the Day” award on Model Mayhem (a networking website for models and photographers). This was the second time I’ve won; the first time was last November. The theme this time was “hair”. I was a bit surprised, because there were some other really good entries that day. Here is the photo that won:

     Yes. That is actually his hair.

    Here is the story. I had worked with this model several times before. His name is Kince. He had been growing his hair progressively longer over the course of a couple of years. I asked him if he ever decided to cut it short, to please let me know. He is a dancer, and got sick of tying it up and pinning it back all the time, so he did decide to cut it off, and he did call me. I only had a few days to set it up.

     I found a stylist to work with. I rented a straight jacket. We sat down and cut off half Kince’s hair! Then teased out the remaining hair to look ratty. I placed clumps of his hair on the table, put a pair of scissors and a straight razor just out of reach, and asked Kince to look longingly at the scissors, as if he’d done this to himself. We tried several different looks. This was my favorite.

     After we were done, the stylist cut the rest of his hair so it all matched. Fun!

     I’ve got a vacancy come up at my studio. So if you are a photographer, or know a photographer, who would be interested in a shared photo studio, please email me for details.

     I’m not really all that surprised. The last official presidential photo would have been taken some time in early 2001. At that time, there were NO high quality digital cameras available commercially. Canon, for example, had only recently debuted the D30, a 3 megapixel DSLR. Very few photographers had them, and it would be considered completely inadequate by today’s standards. A vast majority of professional photographers were still shooting film, and in fact would have considered the D30 inadequate for any professional use.

     Fast forward 8 years. There are now dozens of high quality digital cameras available that could do a perfectly adequate job for a portrait. Most digital point & shoot cameras even have enough resolution for the job. Most professional commercial photographers are now shooting mostly digital. I would have been surprised if this new photo had been shot on film. The particular camera used by the official portrait photographer, Pete Souza, is a Canon 5D mk II, which is arguably capable of higher quality photos than could be done with a medium format film camera. 

     The choice to go digital for the official presidential photo isn’t so much an anomaly as a sign of the times. The simple fact is that 8 years ago almost all portrait photography was still shot on film, and today a vast majority of portrait photography is now digital.

     By the way, I am not overly fond of the official photo. It is a pretty bland portrait, which I suppose is par for the course for an official government photo. I’ve seen many other photos of him that show a lot more personality. Also, he is over 6′1″ tall, and the perspective makes him look short. 

     Click to enlarge:

     I recently did a gig where I shot about 600 Santa photos in about 3 hours. As a photographer, this is a bit of a grind. I think I’d go completely crazy if I had to do this for an entire holiday season. There are screaming infants and toddlers who are terrified by the big guy in the red suit. There are teenage boys who are too cool for Santa and flash gang signs at me when I try to take their photo. There are 300 pound guys that think it is hilarious to get Santa photos (more of a problem for Santa than me, really). And with a huge long line, a big part of the job is to just get through them quickly, so it becomes sort of like the photography version of an assembly line. I have to be fast, but need to make sure the pictures are cute and not inappropriate (imagine in your mind a little girl sitting spread-eagled across Santa’s knee with her pretty little Christmas dress hiked up a bit too high. “No, sweetheart. How about putting your legs together.” Then tug the hem of the dress down to the knees for the photo.) Parents don’t like Santa photos that make Santa look like a perv.

     Doing it for one day is kind of fun. It was for a holiday party a local company was putting on for their factory workers and families. It is one thing for a big wealthy high tech or professional company to do a splashy party. But I think it is generous for a smaller company to do this for regular workers. This was my third year shooting their Santa photos, and the only Santa gig I did this year. 

     By the end, I thought my shutter finger was about ready to fall off. The poor Santa must have bruised legs from having hundreds of kids (and adults!!) sitting on them for 3 hours. The photo above was my parting shot at the end (shot by another photographer I was working with; thanks Morgan!).